Seth Cropsey
By the evening of December 7th, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt understood that the world crisis had taken a new, decisive turn. The United States had been attacked. It must go to war. Yet despite Roosevelt’s apparent rhetorical shock – he inserted the famous “infamy” phrase to emphasize American victimhood vis-a-vis Japan – the Pearl Harbor attacks fit within the constellation of American strategy. Washington’s policymakers, from the president down, understood that the United States would go to war in the coming two years, and potentially in the coming six months depending upon Japanese and German action. Indeed, the Fall of France had impressed upon the United States the non-viability of strategic patience. America had to act and wage war against the revisionist coalition, or risk a permanent, potentially fatal reversal of the Eurasian balance.
A year on from Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel, it is clear that the United States remains shocked and surprised. The Biden administration has shown no sign of grasping strategic reality. Washington faces a world crisis as intense as that of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Its goal must be victory, for without it, the American Republic is unlikely to survive. Instead, the U.S. policy class has embraced a paradigm of de-escalation and war avoidance that guarantees a longer, bloodier contest, whether in this decade or the next.
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